US$69m facelift for NY museum

[NEW YORK]

CHANCES seemed pretty dim nine years ago that the plan to reconstruct and expand the Queens Museum of Art would have a happy architectural ending.

But a US$69 million transformation, which the museum unveiled this month, is astonishing. It is no longer a forbidding bookend to the grand axis of Flushing Meadows-Corona Park. Now it feels like an extension of the park itself. The nearby Unisphere seems to be on display inside, so clear is the view through the glass curtain wall of the museum's facade.